Category: Travel Writing

Tina Moore, at one of many campfires she and Paul Green shared during their journey

What if your partner or spouse asked you to quit your job so that you could travel? What if that seed of an idea they planted casually one day started to germinate? Would you let it keep growing until it flowered and came to fruition?

Paul Green did. And he did it with intention. As he explained to me, his wife Tina asked him in May of 2014 to consider this big step. He gave notice to his employers in August of 2014 and by the next March, he and Tina set out on a three-part journey visiting 17 Trappist monasteries scattered throughout the US. Part of the results of those travels appear in his book, Silence is Spoken Here. Filled with beautiful photos, the pages only hint at the motivations for the journey.

Tina and monks, prayer chapel, Assumption Abbey, Ava, MIssouri

I interviewed Paul last month about the process, as part of my interest in “later vocations”—people’s decisions, sometimes less intentional than others—to step out onto a path that earlier in life they never dreamed about.

Paul and Tina didn’t leave their home in the Ozarks without some clear goals in mind. And, of course, they did quite a bit of planning before taking on this endeavor. But what Paul found was quite unexpected.

He describes what he discovered late in the interview. The Trappists’ teachings and their practices–especially their silence–helped him listen to what was being spoken within himself. As a result, he’s settled down into a new “later vocation” in Northwest Arkansas, where he runs Interbeing Images and he and Tina engage with their community in several ways.

Here’s much of the interview, which I hope will speak to you, as it did to me, about Paul’s journey. (Although he refers to Tina’s role in the process, I interviewed her separately. I’ll share those thoughts next month).

Paul’s words may inspire you to let that seed of an idea you’ve been protecting begin to warm up. You can also follow him and his fantastic photos on Facebook.

Motivations: Spiritual & Professional

Etta: I am fascinated by the trip that you and Tina took to visit Trappist monasteries. And I have read your book, Silence is Spoken Here. In the introduction you talk about how you got started with the idea. Would you say a little bit more about what motivated you?

Paul: Sure. I think from the book you can tell it was somewhat of a long process. It didn’t just happen overnight. It was 2012 when we first visited Snowmass [the home of St. Benedict’s, a Trappist monastery and retreat center in Colorado], and that planted some seed of the spiritual aspect of the book. But at that point certainly there was no idea of traveling to visit Trappist monasteries. And there was certainly no concept of a book. But around that same time, my photography was starting to become more important as a creative outlet that I never had during my career has a telecommunications engineer.

So there was a combination of my really enjoying nature photography and the beginning of a spiritual journey. Tina and I both realized as we came together [as a new couple] that we were both on this journey but maybe in different places. She was really diving into it for the first time, and I was kind of reconnecting to my previous life.

In the book you read about her inspiration at a retreat in North Carolina. That was the first spark of an idea. Our original concept was creating something–we didn’t know whether it would be a book or not–to let people know about taking pilgrimages without leaving the United States, and maybe not traveling more than two or three hours. So that was the first spark of the creative idea.

Hey, we can do something like that–teach others about making a sacred journey somewhere. And it doesn’t have to be this big extravagant trip to the Middle East. Don’t know how yet–but that sounds like something important for us to do.

Etta: To back up a bit–you said that you had been to Snowmass on a spiritual retreat. Can you say why you went there for a spiritual reason?

Paul: Sure. We went there for a centering prayer retreat–centering prayer being a kind of a Christian meditation. What led us to that was Tina’s stepfather, who has led retreats at St. Benedict’s for almost 25 years and had told us of the impact it had on his life. It was one of the spiritual tools that we thought we would check out. Around the same time, we were doing labyrinth work and some Buddhist Meditation. Centering prayer was combining a lot of things we were already doing.

Chapel, St. Benedict’s Monastery, Snowmass, Colorado

Etta: You said that this was sort of going back to something preceding your telecommunications work. What you mean by going back to something before that?

Paul: For most of my life I was as a telecommunication engineer. But in reference to what I was going back to–I grew up in a very conservative southern Baptist family. When I was a child though, I had a great love for my grandfather who was a revivalist preacher in Carroll County, Arkansas. He had his own church later in life. But for the early part of his life, he traveled around to different small community churches and preached revivals. By the time I was around, he still did a few revivals, but by the time I was old enough to remember–three, four, five–he already had a church and was pretty much preaching at the church. But I remember he had a Sunday morning radio program on one of those local am stations. I heard that on our way to church.

Etta: Going to Snowmass then was taking you a different direction from that early childhood religious life, but still you were familiar with prayer and scripture?

Paul: Yeah, I went to every Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday service as a child and, maybe like a lot of people, became a little disenchanted as I got older with the conservative evangelical type churches. And so I quit going to church for most of my adult life. And then after the end of my first marriage, part of my trying to figure out who I was again, was figuring out what does church mean to me? And my religion–do I still have one? All of that was starting to come into focus in the two years before my wife [Tina] and I got together.

Etta: You have referred to her several times, and I had assumed that Tina sparked this searching. But it was already there–you were searching for who you were after your first marriage ended?

Paul: Right. And religion was a part of that, my reconnection. For her, she didn’t grow up in the church. So our meanings on this journey were quite different. We came from completely different backgrounds. For me, it was more of, where are my beliefs?

Etta: So this retreat at Snowmass was not something unfamiliar to you, spiritually speaking, it just introduced new practices?

Paul: Yes. A newer approach to a religious tradition I was familiar with–a totally different approach and much more in line with how I felt internally, versus how I might’ve felt as a child being at times forced to go to church. This was something I really wanted to try and practice.

Etta: The book introduction explains that Tina called you from a retreat in North Carolina. Tell me about that. What happened?

Paul: I can’t remember why I didn’t go to that retreat. I was still working in telecommunications for a company in Boston, working from home. But when she got back from that trip we talked.

She gave me this idea–“hey, I want to travel. I want you to do photography.” And I didn’t refuse right away, but I just said, “I’m working full time. This isn’t a good time, but I’ll consider it.”

I think it sounded like something I would like, but I mean, I’ve been working since I was 16 years old. It’s what you do. You get up and go to work every day. I couldn’t imagine not. I tried. She’s like, “well, just, just think about it.” It was May . . . 2014.

Etta: And you took the trip starting in March of 2015. So less than a year. A lot to decide in less than a year . . .

Reading the “Signs”

Paul: Yeah. It’s interesting. When she first brought it up, I really thought, this will pass. She has ideas from time to time–another one of Tina’s ideas–and we kind of knock them around. But we never say no. We don’t rule anything out. We just kind of go, “okay, maybe not right now, but let’s continue to think about it.” I think, at least for me, I notice if things keep repeating themselves or, there’s gotta be some other, for lack of a better word, “sign” indicating that this is really something I should be doing.

Etta: What were some of those other signs during that nine-month period? What else happened?

Paul: That was mid-May, I guess, until early in July. I’m still working, working from home and I had an incident with a guy I had known from work–I’d known him for eight years. There was a questioning from him of how much I was enjoying my work. I guess, because I worked from home and we didn’t see each other a lot face to face, he was starting to have concerns that I wasn’t happy in my job anymore. I don’t know what gave the friend the impression that I might not be happy. I certainly hadn’t thought, “am I happy or not happy?” But then my boss calls me and asks point blank. He’s like, “are you happy with your job?” And I said, “well, of course.” But the honest answer was I had never thought about it.

I didn’t ever put it in these terms. Of course, I’m happy. I show up every day. And then I hung up the phone and set back for a second. I said, “Well, am I happy with work? Why did he call me? I don’t know.” Honestly, I have to think about this now. As I thought about it and the way some relationships we’re going within the company, I was like, “You know what? I guess I’m not happy.” But had my boss never asked me that point blank, it would have never crossed my mind to ask that myself.

That was one definite sign–maybe not that we were going to run off and do a book–but that I really wanted to consider the next step.

Etta: So that was July. Was there another sign?

Paul: No. At that point I began to talk to Tina about the project again. We had kind of dropped it when she first brought it up. I had said, let me think about it. And that was kind of it. But then all this happened, and I started bringing it up. “I’m considering, maybe, possibly retiring, leaving work and doing this project. Are you really serious about it?” She absolutely was.

Etta: And you were already developing your skills and talents as a photographer. You also mentioned the book plans. By the time you planned the trip, were you planning a book?

Challenges of Planning

Paul: Yes–with no idea how to do a book, or whether we were going to find a publisher. It was, I think, Tina’s way of getting me to consider retiring and traveling. I think her focus was, “I just want to get you in a van and travel around. We’ll see what comes out of it.” But for me, the book was a focus. Originally the concept was to go to spiritual places in all 50 states. We really wanted to let people know about the pilgrimage, and we thought if we found two places in each state, then everybody would have a place they could go that would be close by.

Etta: And you would say you’d been to all 50 states, right?

Paul: But then we started trying to think of what’s spiritual or religious? What’s sacred? And then narrow it down to only two sites in each state.

Etta: It was probably so hard. So that was almost the scrapping of the entire idea because it was overwhelming, or what?

Paul: Absolutely overwhelming. Like, okay, this original idea was way off base. We’ll never be able to write that, and it will certainly take more than a year.

Etta: Remind us of when this discussion was going on?

Paul: Starting in July. I finally put my notice in at the 1st of August, to leave work on October 31st. Between July 1 and October 31st, we kept tossing around these ideas of, “I’m now committed. I’ve put it out there. We need to figure out what we’re really going to do.” And that got a little scary.

Etta: October to March–you had four or five months to figure everything out.

Paul: We bought that 19 and a half foot small class VRV.

Etta: Had you ever traveled in an RV before?

Paul: No, and that was not even a full size one. It’s a tiny thing. We met with a friend who travels for photography quite a bit, and he recommended a brand and we went and researched it and went, okay, yeah, this will work for us. We can do this.

Etta: Since you were beginning to think about a book and you were thinking about photography, tell me more about how you were developing your photography skills during that same period.

Paul: It was just a matter of really focusing, at that time, on landscape and nature photography, which is what I had fallen in love with originally. Tim Ernst, a photographer for National Geographic back in the 70s and from Fayetteville originally, has been doing workshops in Arkansas for probably 20 years. He puts out a book a year, travels around the state. Tina got me a private one-day workshop with him for my birthday.

Etta: You’d been working on photography for three or four years?

Paul: I played around with it, of course, with having a young child playing sports and in the choir at school. I started wanting to take better pictures of those events. But after I did the Tim Ernst workshop, I made an attempt to get out at least once a week, depending on my work schedule. If I had to travel, I couldn’t do it. But I tried to stay committed to getting out and practicing all the things he had taught me in that one day.

Etta: What was it that was motivating you to that? To the photos? Because there’s gotta be some kind of a drive . . .

Paul: Again, it all comes back to what I was realizing–this introverted nature that I have but didn’t really recognize. I felt like a good social guy and it turns out I’m just really aware of other people’s feelings and come off socially introverted and empathetic.

We did enneagram work as another one of the spiritual tools. It’s made me aware of how much I enjoy being outdoors and how that gave me a connection to the divine–the divine being things bigger than yourself.

For me, being in nature is always that reminder of my place in the world. Like anybody that has a huge ego, they need to take a walk around the Grand Canyon or look up at a starry night and go, oh yeah, okay. And photography for me was the chance to be out in the woods and see things in that way. I hadn’t taken the time to see before then.

Snags & Roadblocks

Etta: What else happened in the planning?

Refectory, St. Benedict’s Monastery, Snowmass, Colorado

Paul: What finally shifted everything was another two day visit out to St. Benedict’s at Snowmass to sit down with Father Joseph and Father Charlie. Not to really talk about the book. They listened to us go off on a tangent. “Paul’s retired now and we’ve had this idea for a project to travel around and visit spiritual places. But that’s overwhelming, and we’re just really not sure what we’re going to do next.”

And it was Father Joseph who listened to all that and just very calmly said, “well, have you thought about just visiting the Trappist monasteries?”

They both asked really pointed questions: “Once you identify the places, how are you going to make contact? And how are you going to get in? And what are you going to take pictures of?” We hadn’t really planned that far!

Etta: They were trying to help you get through the difficulties and helping you refine it?

Paul: Absolutely. I think they just listened. And in their vocation, they’re very good listeners, and they are very good at analyzing situations. They don’t get flustered. They take forever to make decisions.

Etta: Like academics!

Paul: They’re just very practical. And of course, they can remove the emotional stuff that we were feeling–that anxiety that’s overwhelming–and look through the muddle. They just said, “don’t know if you’re interested, but here’s one solution”–[Trappists monasteries]!

Etta: Remind me how many monasteries there are? And you visited all of them?

Paul: There were 17 at the time we did our travel. We visited all of them. And I stayed in all but one, and Tina stayed in all of them, too. We both couldn’t stay at Saint Joseph’s in Massachusetts because of their rules and the timing that didn’t work the first time around. I made a second trip back so I could actually stay there.

Etta: It’s almost as though Father Joseph was one more of these signs, providing a way for this to happen? You were sort of overwhelmed.

Paul: Right. If we hadn’t had that conversation with him, I don’t know if we would have come up with that idea on our own, to be honest. I don’t think it ever really crossed our minds just to visit Trappist monasteries. And we would have been stuck with an RV and a plan to travel and I don’t know what we would have done. We may have just traveled and gone to state parks and, and said, “forget the book.” I think the travel was a part of it, as a chance to see different parts of the country, which we loved. It was as important as the monasteries.

Etta: I want to hear more about what you did in each of the monasteries. But can you tell us more about the logistics? I know you had to contact all the sites, and I’m sure there are stories about that, contacting them and making the arrangements, planning exactly where you were going to go first, what your circuit was going to be. Do you want to say anything about that?

Paul: Sure. Tina’s first calling in life might’ve, should’ve been logistics. I didn’t have to do any of the planning.

Evolving Routines

Etta: OK. You don’t have to talk about that part! Tell me what you did when you got to each monastery. If you had a routine, what was your baseline?

Paul: It evolved over time. When we first talked to Father Joseph, he sent out an email to all the monasteries giving me a brief introduction. He said, I will give an introduction, but it’s going to be up to each community on how they receive you and what they allow you to do. And some may say no. And so we had that expectation. I don’t think there was any fear. We were going to give it our best shot and see how things turned out.

We broke up the travels into sections. We visited the monasteries in the Southeast in the spring, the Northeast in the fall to try and get foliage, and the West coast we did late summer, to try and take advantage of a little cooler weather out there. For the first one, in the southeast–Georgia, South Carolina, Kentucky–they had no idea who we were or what we were doing, and we couldn’t get in consistent contact with them. Most of the email addresses we could not find for them.

Etta: Was that because they were just more behind on technology?

Paul: No, it’s because they don’t all use the technology that’s available. It’s part of their lifestyle to be as removed as they can. A project like ours doesn’t really register on their radar. They’ll read. My guess is they probably read the email and went, “okay,” and never gave it a second thought.

Etta: Because they’re going about their business whether you show up or not?

Paul: And they’ve had lots of guests and writers stay with them. They’ve had NPR and TV producers come and do extensive stays. One has been in Blue Highways, William Least Heat Moon’s book. So they’re used to people coming and seeking these things. And we weren’t very professional in how we approached them. We assumed that they had read Father Joseph’s email and we could show up and go from there.

So the first couple were a little different. It didn’t feel all that intimate starting off. But even by the time of Gethsemani, which is one of the more famous Trappist monasteries because of Thomas Merton, when we got there, things started to change a little bit. They still didn’t know who we were exactly, but they have a resident photographer, Brother Paul, who actually was there at the time Merton was there. Since he was a photographer, he took a special interest in our project and was the first one to invite us behind the cloisters–or me. Tina wasn’t allowed. It was just through our conversation that he said, “Well, tomorrow if you’ve got time, I’ll give you a tour around — behind the scenes a little bit.” That was overwhelming.

Etta: Unexpected. It was one of those serendipitous moments. That must’ve made a huge difference in your trip, I would guess?

Chapter room, Our Lady of Gethsemani Abbey, Kentucky

Paul: It kind of gave us that second wind. Yeah. Because at the first two, we just took pictures out front. I wasn’t getting everything I really wanted. And I promised that there would be no pictures of monks in the book, if they didn’t want it. I wanted to respect their privacy more than anything, but there was that hope–I really wanted some pictures that the average person isn’t going to get. And the nature stuff there was really good. I was happy with how that was going, but I was missing a piece of what people would want to see in a book about monasteries, which is architecture. I felt like it was a turning point. That was the end of that section, and then we had a two-week layoff.

Etta: What’d you do during that time? That two weeks?

Paul: Repack. Organize my photos a little bit. Save and put them away so I didn’t have to worry about losing them along the journey.

Etta: Talk about what hadn’t gone well and what you would want to do differently?

Paul: Absolutely. We made more of an effort to recontact monasteries before we got there. Remind them who we are before we showed up. And around that same time, when we started the second part of the trip, all the abbots come together for US regional meeting. And Father Joseph spoke at that as a reminder, “Hey, by the way, there’s this couple that’s making visits. Some of you might’ve seen them already, but others of you should be expecting them to show up in the near future.” So that changed our cause.

Even Ava’s Assumption Abbey and then Our Lady of the Mississippi in Iowa, which were our first two stops on the second phase, both were very well aware and just threw open the doors to both of us. Tina got to tour around Assumption Abbey with the Superior there. He spent probably five hours of his time, just walking us around, telling us the history of Assumption Abbey and his personal history.

Monk at prayer, Assumption Abbey, Ava, Missouri

Etta: It sounds so stupid on my part, but your discussion of Tina not being allowed to go in because she’s a woman–in these works by the 19th century American women in Italy that I am writing about–one of them was visiting these monastic sites in Italy. I didn’t think about the women not being able to go in, but they had to wait outside. So that’s still the case? It wasn’t just that it was the 19th century?

Paul: Right. I mean, it depends on each community. It’s interesting. I’m trying to think of the nuns’ monasteries. I guess Santa Rita in Arizona is the only one where I didn’t go back in the cloister areas, but all the other ones gave me tours of their private areas. And most of the [men’s] communities allowed Tina inside. They toured us both through.

Energizing Moments

Etta: You mentioned the experience with brother Paul being different. What are some of the other moments that you remember as just being very energizing?

Paul: Our Lady of the Mississippi was probably one of the most. Again, it was another first. We showed up there, just south of Des Moines, Iowa, up on a hillside that overlooks the Mississippi River. We arrived there after maybe a four or five hour drive that day, about 15 minutes before their evening service. And they had been in good contact with us on the way. They were working on a book about their monastery at the time for their 50th anniversary. So they were very interested in whether I would share my pictures with them, which of course, was a given. And so there was some excitement from their side in us.

Etta: What was so fantastic there?

Paul: Usually we would check in, go to our room, settle in, and I walk around and start scouting it out. But here, Sister Kathleen who was working on the book immediately says, “Oh great, you’re here. We’ll get you down to the house shortly. But we were wondering if you would join us for service and take pictures there.”

So here I am, I’ve barely gotten to see the first two [monasteries]. The third one, I finally got to go behind the scenes and take pictures, but not during service. And now it’s our first nuns to visit and they’re like, “Hey, take our picture. We’ve got 50 minutes–will you come? And don’t worry about getting in the way. Just go wherever you want to.”

I wasn’t ready to take pictures. I was tired from driving all day. “Okay,” I said, “let me get my stuff together.” And then on the way to service they said, “Oh, so after service we’ll have dinner for you with Mother Rebecca, who is the Abbess, and the Superior and Sister Kathleen want to have a private dinner with you and the Abbess in their private dining area.”

We’re like, “what?” We’ve never had a meal with a monk. Here we are with the nuns. Not only we’re going to have a meal with them–we’re going to have a special meal, and they want to ask us questions, like what are you doing and why? That was a whole new energy.

It was our first group of nuns, and it’s such a different feeling than for men. They were so engaging, asked so many questions, and they felt very motherly–not just to me but also to Tina. “What can we get you? What can we do to make your stay better? Would you like to borrow our mule? (which was actually a four-wheeler. Tina thought it was an actual mule.)

Etta: Was she disappointed?

Paul: Extremely. It’s what she needs to get around on this large, large property. Tina was disappointed, because she had on her jeans and boots, and it was a four-wheeler! She had on her boots and the Mother came driving up in this four-wheeler and she was like, “oh, a mule. I was kind of hoping to see you on a mule.”

Etta: You said that they’d asked you a lot of questions, and I was thinking they were more questions about your journey and what you’re trying to accomplish. But all the questions that they asked you were more about hospitality, kind of motherly.

Paul: It started off certainly with, so why is a married couple from Arkansas visiting a silent monastic Catholic order. And so we shared a lot of the background of that, but then it just got into, “So, do you have kids? and what do they do?” And it became just very conversational.

Silence is Spoken Here

Etta: You mentioned this conversation over dinner, but these monastics are supposed to be silent. Talk a little bit more about the silence in these places and your behavior. How were conversations handled if you weren’t supposed to be talking?

Paul: The silence really–not ended–but changed drastically with Vatican II. Pre-Vatican II, it was total silence and you had to seek permission from the abbots to speak. Otherwise, it [communication] was written and passed via note or monastic sign language. They created their own sign language.

Etta: There are always ways around the rules, right?

Paul: To speak, you had to have something really important—like, “I’m thinking about leaving, or I’m maybe dying.” Other than that, they didn’t speak, uh, except the guest master or whoever interfaced with the clients. And if you think about the history of the Trappists in Europe, so these are monasteries where people would come in and stay for a couple of nights while they were traveling. The Trappists have always welcomed all guests (Benedictines as well welcome all guests) as if they were Christ. And so there was always the one monk who was guest master that could speak with guests to take care of their needs. But Vatican II changed all that.

They don’t have to all line up anymore so strictly. It is up to each community how much, how freely they are to speak. You see the difference between ones where it’s still kind of–you don’t interact with monks much, even in our situation. And then others like Our Lady of the Mississippi, if it’s just the nuns, they still don’t speak freely. But if there’s other people around, they greet guests after service (mass) every day. A couple of the monks or nuns, they’ll stand out usually and greet guests and talk to them at length. The only time they still observe as total silence is at the end of Compline, or the last service of the day, until the end of mass the following day. It’s what they call Grand Silence.

Etta: What time is that mass the next day?

Paul: It depends on the site. Anywhere from 7:30-9 a.m. would be the start time.

Etta: Half a day of silence, anyway.

Paul: Half a day in a sense. And like I said, there are many other brothers that don’t have to interact with guests for any reason. And when I’ve walked around the cloisters, I’ve noticed that you don’t hear idle chatter.

The big picture: “What were you looking for?”

Etta: What you were hoping to find? and did you find it? or maybe something else?

Paul: The big picture. What were we looking for? The honest answer is I had no idea. I brought this up in my contemplative group on Tuesday. I still didn’t have an answer at that point. But it made me really think about a lot of things in my life and, and, and what am I looking for in any given situation.

The honest answer was, I don’t know. What I did know was that there was something I was missing, and at the time had no idea what it is.

What this whole journey has led to, I think, was that what I was looking for was roots back near home, with a contemplative men’s group. I come together with a group of men who are willing to be vulnerable and share. I would have had no idea that’s what I was looking for back in whenever. How would I know that that was a need I had until something led me to it? And then it became very overwhelming. Like, I need this. Any Tuesday that I can’t be in that men’s group is hard.

Etta: That’s so powerful. It reminds me of Ralph Waldo Emerson, commenting on all these people in the 19th century going to Europe, looking for these great things. And what he wrote was, you come back home, and you face the same realities of life. I’m paraphrasing. He said it much more eloquently, but the realization that those things that people are going somewhere else looking for you, you’re going to find the same things, answers or questions, right here.

Paul: That’s right. Those travels and those journeys might help you along the way to defining and finding what that is. But ultimately what you need is in here [points to chest], and you’re going to find it more in your daily life. Along with this journey, we were also relocating from Springfield to Arkansas and we didn’t know where for sure in Arkansas at that time. I really think all of those kinds of ideas helped even with finally picking our home because it became more clear that we need to focus on what are we going to be doing every single day.

Etta: And what you said, which is so mixed, makes so much more sense to me now about going out to do your photography and going out and being in nature. It’s about having your eyes open to see what is there.

Paul: That’s right.

Etta: And reminding you how little you are in relationship to everything that’s around you. That’s what I’m hearing you say.

Paul: Absolutely. And, it’s part of this development and this transformation into a contemplative life. It’s the practice that we learned in centering prayer. It is just one small step into being in a more prayerful–and I call it more aware–state of mind every day. And that leads to things like finding a group of men that share with me. And if I’m not paying attention to those needs I have internally, I’m not going to seek out a group like that.

Etta: It sounds like in some ways you’ve become, your grandfather. Seriously.

Paul: Maybe.

Etta: You are realizing, as you said, the need that you have for nature surrounding you. And you need community that you regularly meet with. Both of those are keeping you grounded. They’re part of your centering.

Paul: That’s right. It’s all part of that.

As I said, the start of this journey was my trying to figure out how to get back to who I was. This [journey] has made me rethink all the messages I heard from my granddad I had growing up. What I would hear later on in those same churches, what I remember, was this–love thy neighbor and, help the poor and all those in need. That’s what really resonates in me today.

Etta: Yeah.

Paul: And then I lost that along the way because of all the other stuff that was getting thrown in there that didn’t make sense. But when they are all stripped out of the way and we get down to the basics, that’s who I am today. I want to help those who need help.

Etta: Such a beautiful story.

Paul: This project helped pull all that we were trying to do together. But this wasn’t the initial idea.

Etta: Right. But one of the things that I’ve heard you say, which is very resonant, is that you weren’t sure what you were looking for, but you went with a photographer’s eyes. You went with an openness to the process of the journey.

Paul: That’s right.

Etta: And just seeing what would happen.

Paul: Tina and I keep trying to balance that in each other. She’s very goal oriented and focused on planning. I’m a little more, um, well, okay, I’ve got a framework and that’ll get me going. We both are able now to see the benefit of both sides of it. There’s gotta be some very focused and organized planning, but you really have to stay open to, “okay, here’s the plan, but if it starts falling apart, that’s okay.”

Etta: Yeah. You’ll build a new plan based on another path.

Paul: That’s right.

Listen to what’s calling you

Etta: I wonder how other people might be able to do something like this if they weren’t quitting a job, or if they feel like, “I can’t do that. I can’t buy one of those vans.” You’ve sort of addressed that because part of what you’ve come around to is realizing what you can do, where you are right now. Do you want to say anything more about that?

Paul: Yeah.

I think the start of anything is really starting to listen. Listen to yourself, listen to what’s calling you internally, feelings, things popping up multiple times. Pay attention to those. And then you don’t have to quit your job to start something else.

As you’re learning, you can start dipping your toes in or finding out more about that, and using whatever time you can to learn more about the craft or the hobby or whatever it is. To wait until you have the time might be too late and you’re going to miss out on opportunities. I think it’s feasible for all of us to just pay attention to what’s going on around us and how we feel about those things. And that’ll start leading you into those paths.

And then you can’t be afraid to fail or try. Once something comes up for you, I always say, give it as much attention as you have time for, and you’ll know pretty soon whether it’s going to stick around or not. If it doesn’t, that’s okay. Something else will come up and eventually, you’re going to hit on that thing that says, okay, yeah, I’m ready to spend once a week with my photography. Before I did the photography workshop, it was just a passing fancy that I spent a little time on, but I didn’t dedicate myself to it. And then after that workshop, I realized that I really enjoy this whole process of being out in nature, of setting up my camera and waiting for good light. And maybe it’s not about the photography at all. It’s about the whole process.

Etta: So what’s next? You guys have another trip planned or another project or projects?

Paul: One of the things that this project taught us is how much we were ready to be really rooted in a community. After being on the road, which is wonderful, we realized that what we want to do is wake up every day and be useful in a community. Now, almost three years of being in Fayetteville, we finally feel like we’re there.

Etta: That’s it–being a vital part of a community. And you’re using what you learned from it.

You are totally employing what you learned from visiting those monastic sites where they are grounded, very focused. They have a purpose. They know what they’re going to do every day.

What we need is here

Paul: That’s right. What we need is here. They still wake up in the same place every day and do the same thing and know that that’s just as important as anything else.

Etta: That’s beautiful. So many ideas you shared–I didn’t know them from reading the book, looking at the pictures or from hearing you guys talk.

Paul: Anytime we’re out and talking about the book, it’s more about sharing them [the Trappists] with the world and getting people to think about “how do we listen to ourselves.” The way we learn to do it is to go and be silent.

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A tour at Mount Mora Cemetery in St. Joseph last week gave me much more than a Halloween scare. It connected me “with the people, places and ideas that shape our society.” This phrase from the Missouri Humanities Council, one of the tour sponsors, markets its mission as “to enrich lives and strengthen communities,” as well as to connect people with ideas. Like events I experienced many years ago in New Hampshire, this one confirmed my belief that while our world continually changes, the value of public scholarship does not.

My eyes might have glazed over as I read the Missouri Humanities mission statement–had it not awakened memories. This phrase about “people” and “ideas,” on the table at my first board meeting of the Missouri organization, resonated with one I heard thirty years ago. Then, I was working with the New Hampshire Humanities Council. “Connecting People with Ideas” was our new brand. We called them slogans then, but the idea was the same. The phrase rang out our dedication to bringing public programming to people in the Granite State.

Humanities Past

Missouri Humanities was one of the sponsors of Voices of the Past at Mount Mora Cemetery

Now New Hampshire Humanities, the organization had supported a young Ken Burns, with his film on the Shakers, Hands to Work, Hearts to God. We had recognized Donald Hall when he was poet laureate for the state, long before he was honored with that role for the country. And we celebrated the bicentennial of the ratification of the US constitution, with speakers such as Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, before she won a Pulitzer in history for The Midwife’s Tale. What I witnessed then was how the organization fostered the intellectual and creative productivity of people such as Burns, Hall and Ulrich. They were concerned not with themselves and their own fame but with ideas–ideas they believed would touch lives of local people. And they were correct.

Gatherings with each of these articulate, wise authors touched the broader public and still resonate for me. They remind me of the value of humanities scholarship made public–for how it enriches the lives of those who hear or see it. Last week, I had a similar experience in St. Joseph, Missouri.

Haunting Figures

In the evening air of Mount Mora Cemetery, rather than in a lecture hall, local actors and actresses gave voice to the early settlement town’s prominent figures.

Standing on Mausoleum Row, surrounded by a community of interested others, we felt history come to life.

We heard of the town’s European settlement by a French fur trader Joseph Robidoux of St. Louis, hired by the American Fur Company to establish a post in the Blacksnake Hills. We learned of Robidoux’s interactions with the indigenous Osage and Creek peoples and his later “negotiations” with the Ioway, Sac and Fox tribes. From Robidoux’s third wife, Angelique, we learned that his second was an indigenous woman and that their daughter, Mary, married Ioway chief Francis White Cloud.

Jeffrey Deroine, Robidoux’s former slave, explained that although he was fluent in several languages and served as an interpreter with the natives, he died illiterate.

Jeffrey Deroine, enacted by Gary Wilkinson

This status remained even after his friends bought his freedom from his abusive owner and he worked for the US government.

Robidoux’s work for the US government platting of the area brought some people rushing west in response. But others migrated more slowly. Among these were the Scotch-Irish Kempers from Kentucky. We learned from Simeon Kemper that he and his wife lost not only a 35-room house due to the Civil War but also three sons in the brutal conflict–two fought as Union soldiers and one as a Confederate. Kemper’s message was haunting indeed, in today’s divided nation.

Simeon Kemper, enacted by Scott Killgore

Some might have expected the Mount Mora tour to be haunting in other ways, but the emotional shivers sent through the cemetery’s air came from how real these horrors of the past continue to be. The local actors were neither Pulitzer-prize winning authors nor famous filmmakers. But like Ulrich, Hall and Burns, they care about how the past informs our present. And they know how such stories can direct our future. What might we learn from these stories of indigenous and European interactions? from the injustices of slavery that continue as social injustices today? Of families divided over political and economic differences that erupt in warfare?

While witnessing these figures bring the past to life, I made another note of what moved me. None of the actors was young. Nor were those of us in the supportive crowd. The roar from the nearby football stadium and its Friday night lights signaled loudly enough where some of the younger set was. Some say history and education are wasted on the young. As a mother of two sons who love history and an educator, I won’t go that far.

Later Vocations

But I will add that many of us, as we garner experiences with our gray hairs, become interested in the lives of those who have gone before. We reach out to read about our ancestors. We want to learn about our origins. We get our 23andMe results. But we also want to know about people who took different paths. We want to know of the Robidouxs and the Kempers and the Deroines and the White Clouds. What drove them? What kept them going? And, when they found what they loved–a place, a person, a creative passion–how did it feed their daily lives? How did it foster their “next steps”?

“many of us, as we garner experiences with our gray hairs, become interested in the lives of those who have gone before . . .”

In the coming months I will be writing here about my research in the lives of nineteenth-century Americans whose journeys took them on different paths. I’m zooming in on a newspaper correspondent, Anne Hampton Brewster; an ambassador’s wife, Caroline Crane Marsh; and an activist Emily Bliss Gould, who established an orphanage and industrial school in Rome. The three followed what I refer to as “later vocations”–callings that in their earlier years they likely never imagined. Yes, all three were women, but their lives were not without men. Nor were the women’s decisions made without men’s influences–that’s an important part of their stories!

Some of you have heard me talk rather obsessively about these women. If you have not, you may be intrigued by how these women have haunted me as I have uncovered their paths. They speak to us–as do those souls in St. Joseph’s Mount Mora cemetery–as we reflect on where we are now, how we got here, and where we might go. May the ideas I share resonate with you on your journey, as you come to better understand the people and places that shape our society.

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Linking “utopian” communal groups and American women writers in Italy, I spoke last weekend on Constance Fenimore Woolson and Zoar.

Zoar Separatist Community, Ohio. Woolson loved to visit from her home in Cleveland.

Woolson began her career with a sketch on the Ohio German Separatist community of Zoarites. “The Happy Valley,” published in 1870, set the foundation for Woolson’s more than two decades as a successful author. Her thought-provoking and insightful sketches, novels and short fiction are regaining the attention they once held. Woolson’s somewhat nomadic life took her throughout Ohio and the Great Lakes region, to Florida and the Reconstruction south, to the Mediterranean and Italy, where she died in 1894.

A few weeks ago, Woolson biographer Anne Boyd Rioux asked for some specifics about my conference talk. I put off answering. Now that it’s complete, I’m better set to respond.

Potted Lemon Trees in Italy

Woolson’s 1881 letter written from near Rome’s Spanish Steps invites the connection between Italy and Zoar. She wrote to friend and editor Henry Mills Alden of the loggia above her apartment:

“this loggia is a little square room with windows towards all points of the compass, and an arbor outside, made of lemon-trees, plants in pots, and climbing vines. . . . Here among the roofs and campaniles, and under the deep blue sky of Rome, I can sit and write in perfect solitude when tired of my little parlor below. It all seems so wonderful and strange,–the being here at all! I think of Ohio and the Zoar farm where I used to spend so much time; of Mackinac and the peculiar color of Lake Huron; and of Florida, and the pine-barrens. And, all the while, I am in ‘Rome’!”

At a conference where participants’ interests are primarily communal groups, I began with this quote but then concentrated on Zoar.

The Zoar Sketches

Woolson’s early works referring to Zoar set the stage for stories in which her characters often imagine better worlds. Within “The Happy Valley,” “Solomon” (1873) and “Wilhelmina” (1875), published in Harper’s and the Atlantic Monthly, Zoar prompted such glimpses for visitors from Cleveland and Cincinnati. In these stories, Woolson juxtaposes idyllic views with life’s often harsh realities—whether within or outside of the community.

Fruits of Zoar

To set the stage for the Communal Studies Association conference audience, who knew nothing of Woolson but something of Zoar, I mentioned Woolson’s now-better-known predecessors, contemporaries and successors—Hawthorne, Twain, James, Howells, Wharton, Cather. I depended heavily on what Woolson biographer Anne Boyd Rioux and Zoar historian Kathleen Fernandez have written on the subject. The “enclave of German separatists in the Tuscawaras Valley” was one of Woolson’s “favorite spots” to visit, coming from her home in Cleveland.

The “enclave of German separatists in the Tuscawaras Valley” was one of Woolson’s “favorite spots” to visit. . . Anne Boyd Rioux

“Woolson’s feelings for Zoar show through.” Kathleen Fernandez

Woolson’s “romantic” and “idealized views about the Society” include some inaccuracies. But “the stories have the ring of truth. Woolson’s feelings for Zoar show through.” I added to these overviews an assertion that Woolson’s writings about Zoar enabled her to soar.

Professionally speaking, anyway, the author’s imaginative reflections on life in and around an intentional, utopian community contributed to her following of readers. This following bolstered her financially and gave her confidence. Zoar prompted Woolson to spin stories that pushed her to consider the themes of marriage and the isolated artist’s life. As Rioux and several other scholars have noted, these themes would remain with Woolson throughout her career. I suggest additionally that the three Zoar sketches considered together reveal the beginnings of her understanding of the power of utopian imaginings and of gift exchanges that cross barriers of community and place.

“Solomon” — A Story of Gift Exchange

Through “Solomon, ” in particular, a story of gift exchange and human love, Woolson reminds us that utopia is, by definition, not a literal place. Rather, it is an imaginative vision that individuals hold and may share. By the time Woolson wrote this sketch, she realized that linking Zoar insiders and outsiders were these keys: imagining, giving and exchanging, and in doing so, creating community, however small.

Memories of past experiences lead to ideas of community shared in the present and projected onto the future. The German Separatists held memories of European traditions as they shared visions of a new home in the Tusacarawas valley and labored to build it. So, too, Woolson held on to her memories of childhood visits to Zoar. She adapted them, as the Zoarites adapted to their new environment.

First Settler House Zoar

While Woolson migrated as an uprooted adult, looking for the perfect place in which to write, her work also caused her to imagine other places. As she soared above and beyond Zoar in later years, moving to Italy, she never completely left behind the idyllic place in Ohio. As Rioux has noted, in the last few years before her death, she was “writing . . . of her father and their trips to Zoar and the Tuscawaras Valley in Ohio.” Memories of Zoar, even late in Woolson’s life, reflect the importance of those visions that fed her imagination and bolstered her professional position.

Audience Response and More

The best news about this presentation? The audience response. One person asked, why was Woolson popular in her day but overlooked in the twentieth-century? And why has scholarship on Woolson exploded in the last decade? More than one asked about her financial success. Several wanted to know how to access Woolson’s writings. Of course, I referred them to Miss Grief and Other Stories , to Victoria Brehm and Sharon Dean’s gathered reprints, and to the Great Lakes collection, Castle Nowhere. I told them that their local libraries might have turn-of-the century copies of Castle Nowhere, Jupiter Lights, The Front Yard and Dorothy. I explained that the Constance Fenimore Woolson Society website provides a chronology of all her works, with active links to those available free online.

Finally, I encouraged them, as I encourage you, to read “Solomon.” Once you do, you will be hooked to move beyond the Zoar sketches to see how they enabled Woolson to soar as a writer. You will be engaged by her ability to capture life’s hopes and promises, as well as its troubles and truths.

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I often teach works by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Catharine Maria Sedgwick and Margaret Fuller, three among several 19th-century American writers whose lives were changed by time abroad. My current book project focuses on three other American women who were their contemporaries–Anne Hampton Brewster, Emily Bliss Gould, and Caroline Crane Marsh. These American women and their visions of making the world a better place were transformed as they traveled to and lived in Italy. I will be sharing more about these women and communities in future posts. Check back to see updates, or contact me for more information.